Her Dress

Taulani Salt

When one of her friends commissioned a bolt of fabric from the local mill, Emma jumped at the opportunity to buy some from her. The fabric, a white cotton with purple and green stripes that became synonymous with the suffragette movement, was perfectly sensible for a respectable young lady, and subtle enough to not draw attention of those who disagreed with her cause.

She spent hours between working, running errands and household chores carefully drafting and cutting out pattern pieces, then twice as many more hunched over her sewing machine, pushing the fabric under the needle as she worked the treadle mechanism with her foot. It started to look something like a dress around the halfway mark, save for the sleeve she sewed on inside out by accident. It was after many unpicked and resewn seams, scabbed fingers and empty bobbins, that she had something wearable, finished with green tassels and purple blanket-stitched embroidery around the hems.

Sewn from medium-weight cotton, the dress was perfectly breathable in summer, lightweight and absorbent enough to keep her cool, even with several layers of undergarments underneath. It had a fashionable silhouette, curving at the chest and pinching at the waist in a way that reflected the shapes of the decades before it, with a higher hemline and straight skirt that felt modern and new. The sleeves were cuffed at the wrist and fastened with fabric-covered buttons, which mirrored the hidden fastenings tucked away in the bodice.

Though some of her friends and fellow suffragettes had—quite boldly—taken to burning their corsets, Emma was fond of the garters that kept her stockings from falling and the back support it provided, and so she kept it.

Emma wore her dress to countless suffrage rallies and meetings, standing tall in the heat of the crowd as she joined her fellow women in the fight for their rights. These gatherings were part of a much larger movement sweeping across the United Kingdom; it was a battle that had been fought for decades by women who demanded the right to vote. The suffragette movement, which first gained momentum in the early twentieth century, was often marked by both peaceful protests and more militant ventures. Groups like the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded by Emmeline Pankhurst, were known for their slogan, ‘Deeds, not words,’ as they resorted to civil disobedience and, at times, even violent demonstrations that drew attention to their cause. Emma watched as friends chained themselves to buildings, smashed windows, went on hunger strikes and faced arrest with a fierce determination that shocked the nation. These women were met with a hostility that rivalled their own, facing widespread ridicule from the public and the press. It got to the point where many suffragettes learnt to defend themselves against police and other aggressors using sharp hatpins, bats, and even martial arts, all while maintaining a composed and presentable appearance, aided by their white dresses, feathered hats, and gloves. Emma told no one of the small thread scissors tucked in her corset.

The announcement came in February 1918 that women over thirty had finally secured the right to vote. It was a victory for the movement and for every woman who had marched, protested and quietly supported the cause from the sidelines. Emma was one of the eight million women who visited the ballot boxes for the first time ever in December of that same year. She proudly wore the dress as she cast her vote, the white, purple and green representing the purity, dignity and hope she and her sisters had upheld during their fight for the vote. However, it would be another decade until women’s voting rights were equal to men’s, so the fight for equality was far from over.

The years passed and the struggle continued, and so life moved on for Emma. The rallies became less frequent, and suffragette sashes and banners were folded away. One day, without knowing it, she unbuttoned the dress and put it away for the last time, where it would later be found once more and shipped thousands of kilometres across the world. The dress had lived, just as Emma had, but somewhere along the line, it had stopped being a dress and had become a historical artifact; it was to be preserved, examined, and displayed by trained eyes and gloved hands.  

Her dress’ place in the gallery says a lot about how domestic items like clothing and furniture can be just as important and political as art. Being in an art gallery completely changes the context of an item; it forces you to see things from an abstract perspective separated from fact and history, and allows you to lead with your emotions rather than logic, giving them more purpose and impact than if they were in a museum. We view these items as if they were paintings or sculptures, looking for intention and meaning and drawing conclusions based on personal biases until we get a satisfying story or explanation. To quote Roland Barthes, ‘I would have to consent to combine two voices; the voice of banality, (to say what everyone sees and knows,) and the voice of singularity, (to replenish such banality with all the élan of an emotion which belonged only to myself).’ Galleries encourage us to connect with the voice of singularity by doing just this, finding personal significance and a sense of dynamism in the ordinary which allows it to resonate more deeply with us.

This process led me to Emma. Despite being a ghost of a woman who was once as real as I am, now indistinguishable from who she really was, her dress, and the secrets hidden in its lining, allowed me to connect with a part of myself that I hadn’t met yet. Emma is both an extension of myself and the women of her time. She shares my own qualities and values, as well as those of the stern, sloe-eyed Scottish women of my bloodline who shared a generation with her. Real or not, she was able to leave a small legacy that reflects the passion, dedication and creativity she brought to a cause she believed in. Her skills positioned her in history.  

I was always told I was an ‘old soul’, a geriatric teenager who loved liquorice and crossword puzzles, who spent her weekends learning how to sew and knit with her grandmother, who baked ANZAC biscuits to dunk in Earl Grey tea. I used to joke that my dream job didn’t exist anymore, that I would’ve done a great job of nursing wounded soldiers back to health in a Gallipoli field hospital. It makes sense then, that I'm drawn to historical fiction, that I lose myself in books and write characters who live in eras long before my own. It’s easy to romanticise a candlelit era full of handwritten love letters and long skirts when you don’t have to fight tooth and nail for the opportunity to stand at a ballot box or to attend a public university alongside your male counterparts. Emma didn’t think there was much to romanticise.

Maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to history: not because I long to live in the past, but because I want to honour it. I want to remember the women who sewed their dresses by hand and fought for the vote, even if I’ll never meet them. I want to connect to them in some way, through the stories I tell and the appreciation I have for the antique. The freedoms we enjoy today are threads woven into the fabric of history, just like the ones Emma stitched into her dress. I am a product of such history, just as future generations will be products of mine.

As I started to leave, still a little caught up in my thoughts, a young girl on an excursion with her school smiled up at me and said, ‘I love your outfit!’

I grinned back, a little startled as I thanked her, glancing down at the camel coat, men’s jeans, sweater and Blundstones I had picked up off my bedroom floor that morning without much thought. It struck me that in some small way, this cute little girl was perhaps seeing a little piece of herself in me, just like I saw a part of myself in Emma’s dress. I left with the thought that the choices we make in how we express ourselves can resonate beyond our intentions, that there’s a connection between generations found in the small parts of ourselves we leave behind. I wondered what I might leave behind one day. What ordinary thing in my life would find its way into the hands of someone far in the distant future?

Taulani Salt is a fiction writer native to the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. When she's not up late writing intensely dramatic historical romance stories in her notes app, she can be found curled up on the couch with a cup of tea, in the kitchen perfecting her apple pie recipe, or boot-scooting at her local country bar. Her practice is influenced by her ever-inconsistent sleep schedule, and her penchant for romanticising everything the world has to offer.